Friday, June 28, 2013

BUT THE EYE OF MODOR IS UPON YOU

The classic
scene in the 19th and 20th centuries – part fact, part
fiction – when the officer orders his men to open fire on the starving workers
as the bread riot gets underway, and, one by one, the soldiers lower their guns
and then turn them on the bloody officers. It’s the cliché tipping point of
revolution. Am I deluding myself with wishful thinking that Edward Snowden,
Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, all the way back to Daniel Ellsberg, are a
more modern version of the same revolutionary. Can all those wage slaves at the
NSA, CIA, GCHQ, etc. fucking over their comrades and spying them night and day become
mad as hell and refuse to take it any more. Okay so the crypto-fascist
cocksuckers in power are watching every move we make. Fuck ‘em. Give them the
finger and go on making the move. They can’t arrest all of us. That’s welcome
to Planet Gulag.

In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me – who lives and who dies?”

In the show, Tyrion’s immediate response is, “Depends on the sellsword.” Varys immediately counters by asking, “Does it?” Tyrion’s reasoning, obviously, is that the sellsword has a sword, and therefore the power of life and death. The decision is his, and therefore the power.

Varys then poses the true riddle, and one of the main themes of the series: If power lies with the men who carry swords, why do we pretend that kings hold the power? Power, he argues, is ephemeral, a shadow – “power lies where we think it lies.”